and did much in the field of junior sport.  Their high school life, as set forth in the series of that name, was one of athletics, mixed with much study and efforts to find their true paths in life.  In high school athletics the members of Dick & Co. won a statewide reputation, as to-day members of winning high school athletic teams are bound to do.  It was during their high school days that Dick & Co. determined on their professions through life.  Dick Prescott and Greg Holmes both secured competitive appointments to the United States Military Academy, and their further doings are set forth in the “West Point Series.”  Dave Darrin and Dalzell, with a burning desire for naval life, obtained appointments to the United States Naval Academy at Annapolis.  What befell them is fully told in the “Annapolis Series.”  As for Tom Reade and Harry Hazelton, while still in high school they became seized with a strong desire for careers as civil engineers.  They were fortunate enough to secure their first practice and training in a local engineering office in the home town of Gridley.  Then, with vastly more courage than training, Tom and Harry went forth into the world to stand or fall as engineers.

Their first experiences are told in the opening volume of this series, “The Young Engineers In Colorado.”  Joining a western engineering force as “cub” engineers, at first the laughing-stock of the older engineers on the staff of a new railroad then building in Colorado, the two boys did their best to make good.  How well they succeeded is known to readers of that volume.  Their adventures in the Rocky Mountains were truly astounding; some of them, especially those with “Bad Pete,” a braggart and scoundrel of the old school, were sometimes mirth-provoking and sometimes tragic.  Other adventures were vastly more serious.  When the boys reached the crisis of their work it seemed as though every tree in the mountains concealed an enemy.  All these and many more details are told in that first volume.

In “The Young Engineers In Arizona,” we found the pair engaged in a wholly new task—­that of filling up an apparently unfillable quicksand in the desert so that a railway roadbed might be built safely over the dangerous quicksand that had justly earned the name of the “Man-killer.”  Here, too, adventures quickly appeared and multiplied, until even the fearful quicksand became a matter of smaller importance to the chums.  How the two young engineers persevered and fought pluckily all the human and other obstacles to their success the readers of the second volume now know fully.